In September 2013, the oil and gas company Lone Pine Resources announced it was suing Canada for $250 million in damages under investment rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The target of the lawsuit was a partial moratorium on shale gas development (fracking) in the province of Quebec.

In its notice of arbitration, Lone Pine complained of the provincial government's "arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation of the Enterprise's valuable right to mine for oil and gas under the St. Lawrence River in violation of Chapter Eleven of the NAFTA."

It may seem incredible that a trade deal would give companies a right to profit from anything, let alone an industrial process as controversial as fracking. It is incredible but true.

And the Harper government is about to give these same "rights" to European companies in a nearly completed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). A new poll commissioned by the Council of Canadians suggests most people in Canada are opposed to the idea.

The Environics telephone survey, conducted between Nov. 14 and 20 among a national sample of 1,003 adults, found broad support (73 per cent) for the idea of free trade with Europe. This is consistent with previous surveys from many other polling companies showing high support for more transatlantic trade.

But according to our poll, 54 per cent of Canadians said they oppose giving special protections to EU firms, "similar to the protections American investors in Canada have as part of free trade with the U.S. [that] let them sue Canadian governments if they feel a government policy, including an environmental policy, unfairly affects their investment or profits in Canada."

If investor lawsuits were a rare occurrence, this wouldn't be so interesting. But they're not. In fact, investor-to-state dispute settlement has grown exponentially over the past decade along with the number of bilateral and regional investment treaties in play globally, estimated at around 3,300 and growing.

Canada's first investment protection treaty was in NAFTA. It guarantees that U.S. and Mexican companies will receive treatment that is no worse than that offered Canadian firms, and also treatment as good as Canada offers to the companies of any other country. Fair enough.

But NAFTA, and all Canadian investment treaties since, also guarantee fuzzy but very strong protections with names like "minimum standards of treatment" or "fair and equitable treatment." Exactly what they mean is left up to investment arbitration panels with no obligation to work within the limits of national laws.

As a result of this ambiguity, and the power of paid private arbitrators to interpret treaties like NAFTA or CETA, the definition of "fair and equitable treatment" has expanded over the years to favour investors over government. Not surprisingly, it is the most frequently cited insult by corporations and private investors in investor-to-state disputes globally.

Under NAFTA's investor-to-state dispute process, Canada has been sued at least 30 times for breaches of these investor "rights" in NAFTA. The government has lost or settled half a dozen claims totalling about $160-million in payouts to U.S.-based corporations. Several corporate lawsuits involved environmental policies. In one case, the government repealed a ban on trade in gasoline containing a suspected neurotoxin after Canada has taken to NAFTA investment arbitration.

Canada has also settled several cases before investment tribunals could reach their final decisions. This happened in 2010 in a NAFTA lawsuit from pulp and papermaker AbitibiBowater (now Resolute Forest Products), which claimed its "rights" to timber and water were unfairly expropriated by the Newfoundland and Labrador government.

There are eight ongoing NAFTA investment lawsuits, including the Lone Pinie case, a $500-million challenge to two court decisions overturning pharmaceutical patents for lack of evidence of their usefulness, a temporary moratorium on off-shore wind farms in Ontario, and the federal government's plans to build a second international crossing between Windsor and Detroit to improve trade flows.

Despite this embarrassing record, Canada continues to pursue investment protection treaties with dozens of countries, including a controversial Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China that cannot be cancelled for 15 years and would live on for 15 more if it ever was. (The FIPA has not been ratified yet because of a B.C. First Nation is challenging it in court.)

The CETA investment chapter, which Howard Mann of the International Institute for Sustainable Development recently called "the most investor-friendly set of corporate rights" Canada has ever negotiated, would live on for 20 years in the unlikely event it was cancelled. European corporations pursue more investor-to-state lawsuits than corporations from any other country in the world.

Combined, these two treaties alone (China and CETA) will mean that dozens of future environmental, resource conservation and other public interest regulations and laws will end up in front of private arbitration panels, deciding if the policies are "fair" or not for foreign investors. Considering the environmental and social record of this Conservative government, that might be point of signing these deals.

But they sign them without a public mandate. In November, more than 100 Canadian, Quebec and European organizations published a statement opposing the investment protections and investor-to-state dispute process in CETA. The Council of Canadians poll shows the public is also uncomfortable with the idea.

It's time to reverse course on corporate rights treaties -- to balance the desires of investors to profit against our democratic right to govern in the broader public interest.

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In this file photo from Oct. 14, 2011, a drilling rig is seen in Springville, Pa. State regulators blamed faulty gas wells drilled for leaking methane into the groundwater in nearby Dimock, Pa. It was the first serious case of methane migration said to be related to the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale gas field drilling boom. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, FILE)

British police secure the area where demonstrators erected a mock fracking rig with a banner reading 'No fracking in the UK' in a protest against hydraulic fracturing for shale gas outside the Houses of Parliament in London on December 1, 2012. AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS

SPRINGVILLE, PA - JANUARY 18: A truck with the natural gas industry, one of thousands that pass through the area daily, drives through the countryside to a hydraulic fracturing site on January 18, 2012 in Springville, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MAY 30: Protestors stage a demonstration against fracking in California outside of the Hiram W. Johnson State Office Building on May 30, 2013 in San Francisco, California. Dozens of protesters with the group Californians Against Fracking staged a protest outside of California Gov. Jerry Brown's San Francisco offices demanding that Gov. Brown ban fracking in the state. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

People demonstrate on August 3, 2013 in La Petite Brosse, near Jouarre, outside Paris, to protest against an exploratory oil shale drilling, considering that it opens the door to the exploration of shale gas in the Parisian Basin. Banner reads 'Stop gas and oil shale'. AFP PHOTO / PIERRE ANDRIEU

In this Nov. 26, 2012 photo, Steve Lipsky demonstrates how his well water ignites when he puts a flame to the flowing well spigot outside his family's home in rural Parker County near Weatherford, Texas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had evidence a gas company's drilling operation contaminated Lipsky's drinking water with explosive methane, and possibly cancer-causing chemicals, but withdrew its enforcement action, leaving the family with no useable water supply, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press. The EPA's decision to roll back its initial claim that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations had contaminated the water is the latest case in which the federal agency initially linked drilling to water contamination and then softened its position, drawing criticism from Republicans and industry officials who insisted they proved the agency was inefficient and too quick to draw conclusions. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

In this file photo of Jan. 17, 2013, Yoko Ono, left, and her son Sean Lennon visit a fracking site in Franklin Forks, Pa., during a bus tour of natural-gas drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania. Ono and Lennon have formed a group called Artists Against Fracking, which has become the main celebrity driven anti-fracking organization. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

In this March 29, 2013 file photo, a worker checks a dipstick to check water levels and temperatures in a series of tanks at a hydraulic fracturing operation at a gas drilling site outside Rifle, Colorado. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

In this March 29, 2013 file photo, a worker switches well heads during a short pause in the water pumping phase, at the site of a natural gas hydraulic fracturing and extraction operation outside Rifle, in western Colorado. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

In this March 29, 2013 file photo, workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation at a gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Josh Fox, director of the anti-fracking, Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland testifies during a House Committee hearing on oil drilling, "fracking" legislation at the Illinois State Capitol Tuesday, May 21, 2013, in Springfield, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

This is a Thursday Aug. 15, 2013 image of the Cuadrilla exploration drilling site in Balcombe, southeast England. (AP Photo/Gareth Fuller/PA)

A child plays near a farmers' protest in an area where oil company Chevron plans to put a drilling rig exploring for shale gas in the south-eastern Polish village of Zurawlow on June 11, 2013. AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI

Protesters hold a banner during a protest outside of the Momentive resin plant, Monday, July 8, 2013, in Morganton, N.C. Dozens of environmental activists blocked a chemical plant Monday to protest against the company's sale of products used in the natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. (AP Photo/The News Herald, Mary Elizabeth Robertson)

A fracking rig exploring for shale gas of oil company Chevron on June 11, 2013 in a village of Ksiezomierz in south-eastern Poland. AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI

People demonstrate on August 3, 2013 in La Petite Brosse, near Jouarre, outside Paris, to protest against an exploratory oil shale drilling, considering that it opens the door to the exploration of shale gas in the Parisian Basin. AFP PHOTO / PIERRE ANDRIEU

Opponents of hydraulic fracturing in New York state attend a news conference and rally against hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, on January 11, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Eric Weltman of Food & Water Watch attends a news conference and rally against hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, in New York State on January 11, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Opponents and supporters of gas-drilling, or fracking, walk into the last of four public hearings on proposed fracking regulations in upstate New York on November 30, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Engineers on the drilling platform of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Engineers at work on the drilling platform of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

General views of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Engineers look at the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

A lump of shale rock on display at the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Engineers on the drilling platform of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Engineers at work on the drilling platform of the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Drill heads on display at the entrance to the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

An engineer displays a lump of shale rock at the Cuadrilla shale fracking facility on October 7, 2012 in Preston, Lancashire. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images)

Actor/director Mark Ruffalo (C) speaks at the Hydraulic Fracturing prevention press conference urging the protection of the drinking water source of 15 million Americans at Foley Square on April 25, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by D Dipasupil/Getty Images)

(L-R) Actor/director Mark Ruffalo, Denise Katzman, Wenonah Hauter, and Water Defense co-founder/campaign director Claire Sandberg attend the Hydraulic Fracturing prevention press conference urging the protection of the drinking water source of 15 million Americans at Foley Square on April 25, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by D Dipasupil/Getty Images)